Logistics is the management of the flow of movable items between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet requirements of end-customers, manufacturers, or a distribution node therebetween. One of the goals of a logistics data management system is to ensure security by tracking of goods through the entire supply chain from origin to consumption. Conventional tracking frequently involves a database at each node along a supply chain, where the database maps identifiers to intake or shipping information. Cross-company tracking can occur if an entity correlates information from different databases using unique identifiers.
However, this method of cross-company tracking will require that an individual company labels or otherwise identifies its shipments with the same identifiers as other companies. This is unpractical for many companies, especially when packaging of items are changed from one company to another. For example, one company may label a case, whereas another company may label an entire pallet full of cases. For another example, some companies intake multiple components to create a composite item for sale. In these situations, conventional methods of tracking goods are difficult or impossible to implement. Nevertheless, consumers and companies involved in a supply chain can still benefit from provenance information whether or not items are re-packaged or re-combined.